


I want to love you but I don't know how

by illgivethattoyou



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Episode: s04e13 Praimfaya - Time Jump, F/M, It was supposed to be a one-shot but it turned out 5 and a half K words, Post-Episode: s04e13 Praimfaya, Time Jump, as canon as i could make it, bellarke reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 02:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illgivethattoyou/pseuds/illgivethattoyou
Summary: She sank down, and her dreams went cold, filled with silent tears and choking sounds. Because what if she hadn’t been in time? She killed them, and the longer the radio gave her nothing, the more certain she was. The image of the rocket making its way into the clouds repeated itself over and over, and as she woke up, she would yell, regardless of the blisters in her throat. No one was there to hear her.He shot up, and his dreams were set ablaze, filled with horrid screams and crackling heat. He killed her. The red numbers flickered behind his eyelids. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. He would hear her voice in his ears, softly uttering his name, telling him to stay strong without any other words. But the whispers turned into static, followed by the roaring of the storm. She’d scream as the flames consumed her. He watched, until he woke up. And he’d cry, silently. Why would he make a sound? There was no one there to listen. No one that mattered.





	1. i'm an open book with a torn out page

She sank down, and her dreams went cold, filled with silent tears and choking sounds. Because what if she hadn’t been in time? She killed them, and the longer the radio gave her nothing, the more certain she was. The image of the rocket making its way into the clouds repeated itself over and over, and as she woke up, she would yell, regardless of the blisters in her throat. No one was there to hear her.

He shot up, and his dreams were set ablaze, filled with horrid screams and crackling heat. He killed her. The red numbers flickered behind his eyelids. _Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero._ He would hear her voice in his ears, softly uttering his name, telling him to stay strong without any other words. But the whispers turned into static, followed by the roaring of the storm. She’d scream as the flames consumed her. He watched, until he woke up. And he’d cry, silently. Why would he make a sound? There was no one there to listen. No one that mattered.

After what she thought was three weeks, she was able to stand up and search the building. All she had been consuming was water and liquid nutrition packs, because nothing would go down her throat. Two weeks later, she freed herself of her entire suit and sat on the floor, tending to her skin, littered in burns, and the parts where her flesh had been stuck to the hazmat suit. As she sat, and occasionally drank something or forced some dried rations down, she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Up there. She liked to imagine how they would be drinking their recycled urine by now, how they’d be breathing air as if they were in the bunker. How, in a little more time, they’d be eating from the disgusting algae. Maybe Murphy would try to make the best of it. Maybe Raven and Monty had come up with a solution for every single problem up there. Maybe they were floating in space, life sucked from their bodies along with their oxygen. She’d think about the chance that, when those five years would finally be over, there was nothing left for her. It made her want to scream, the thought. Cry until there was nothing left in her body, and her heart would stop beating. But it didn’t. She didn’t. Two more weeks had passed before she finally began to think about rationing her food and other supplies. One week further, she picked up the radio, and hit the button.

Her voice broke as she spoke, since she hadn’t spoken in over two months. She talked, out loud, and it hurt. “Bellamy,” His name felt like ice on her tongue. She thought about him as he dangled in the rocket, the hazmat suit suffocating him. “I’m here.” That was all she managed. He wasn’t there with her. 

He wasn’t there with her. And it hurt like hell. At first, he began to settle everything, but as soon as he realised that the Ark wasn’t his expertise, he sank back into his room. The mattresses were cold. They smelt like metal and cheap detergent, and although he was born and raised on the ship, it didn’t feel like being alive. It felt like a constant phase between dreaming and sleeping. Octavia. Aurora. Clarke. _The air could be toxic._ If anyone had told him that she would become the person he would depend on most, he wouldn’t have believed them. And now, he found himself clawing for breath at the thought of her, because he left her behind, he left her behind, and he wasn’t sure he could live without her.

After three weeks, they’d seen the entirety of the ring. It was Raven who came to make him aware of the Skybox. He didn’t think it mattered, but when she led him to the entrance of box 319, he slumped against the doorframe, speechless. Tears formed in his eyes. The mechanic got him to sit down, and they sat for a while. They didn’t have to exchange any words for them to decide that Bellamy could claim the room. The bed didn’t smell like Clarke, but the drawings; oh, the drawings. They told him how wrong he had been, how many times he could have told her he would’ve loved her; if only he had known how. “Clarke,” he croaked to the wall, one night, his hands shaking in his lap. “I’m here.” But she wasn’t there with him. She was gone, and after a while, he started to believe it.

______________________

She stopped screaming at night, as soon as she found something to keep her busy. This took the shape of a five-year old she met about a year after Praimfaya. Clarke had managed to go outside, adapt to the radiation very slowly, and moved herself across the water. Or, whatever was left of it. It had become so shallow that she could drive across it once she found the rover, which had been waiting for her on the other side. It wasn’t untouched, and it took her time, but she restored it until it was drivable. Raven would be proud of her, and she made a reminder to herself to tell her when she came down. 1512 more days to go.

Clarke had filled every square inch of the walls in the lab with drawings; or at least, on every level she could reach. She drew Raven, Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori and Echo. She drew Octavia, Kane and her mother. She drew Jasper, Lincoln, Lexa, naturally, and she cried and cried and lost herself over the face of the woman staring back at her. The woman she had loved so dearly, who was gone, like so many others. At some point, Wells and her father started to appear, just so she wouldn’t forget them. Finn, Maya. Niylah came up; Miller, Anya, Jackson. She drew Maya and Jasper, together happily, just to punish herself. She found the courage to draw the happiest Octavia and Lincoln, in friendly combat, in bed, lying together, in the warmest embrace. Murphy and Emori in the kitchen as she’d seen them, him behind the stove, where she surprised him with a hug from behind. Luna appeared somewhere in between. She even dared to draw her mother and Kane, as leaders, holding hands to hold onto each other. It reminded her of someone. But that someone was the one and only she couldn’t bring herself to draw. She could find his face in her memory, but she never dared to study those deep browns closely enough to draw. Those freckles that littered his cheeks, which she’d never dared to map out exactly. She didn’t want to remember Bellamy Blake wrong. 

When she brought the little figure back to the lab, the dark eyes widened at the sight of all the faces. Raven in a space suit, a small smirk, the words ‘THAT DEATH WAVE CAN KISS MY ASS’ next to her in capital letters. Lexa on her knees, light in her eyes -- not captured perfectly, if you asked Clarke -- and looking beautifully exposed in the black dress. Murphy and Emori in the embrace after Clarke had pulled the kill switch in the City of Light. After a while, the girl opened her mouth one night. “Clarke,” she said. The name rolled off her tongue a bit awkwardly. “Tell me,” she demanded, her finger pointing to the wall, directly between the eyes of Octavia, drawn as the girl she was when Clarke reunited with her and Bellamy in Camp Jaha.

And Clarke told her, in a gentle voice and simple English. She didn’t tell her everything, but she told her about the ark, the hundred -- and one, including Bellamy --, the dropship, the grounders, the mountain men, the City of Light, and finally about Praimfaya and the seven that were supposed to go up. She told the little girl how Clarke had wanted to go back to the castle in the sky too, but she had to climb a tower, and she was too late. Madi, was the girl’s name, and the bedtime stories became more complicated, more detailed, as the weeks, months, passed. Together, they spent time learning, talking and listening, and building a home for the two of them. They moved things from what was left of the mansion and Becca’s bunker to the lab; Madi had insisted they stayed there, for the drawings. Clarke found herself looking towards the new plants near the lab, and did tests on whether they were poisonous. She taught Madi to fight, and to shoot, even though they might never need it. And every day, Clarke radioed to her friends in the sky castle. “1346 more days, Bellamy. I guess I’ll see you then.”

He really stopped grieving over her after two years. Sure, he had his moments, but he could think about her as one of his favourite memories. He did what he did best; focus on going back to his little sister, and make sure that everyone on the Ark was doing okay. He was counting down too, but with a different face in mind. Because he did something else to keep him sane; he told himself that she was dead, gone, never coming back. He appreciated the drawings, still; he held onto them as if they were a part of her he could still feel. As if he could see the blue of her eyes as they stared up to him in their last moments on earth. He made sure to take all of her last words to heart. He used his head, because she wasn’t there to do so anymore. But his heart dominated, and he knew there was room for improvement still, he told himself. He stood next to Murphy the evening of their three year anniversary of the reborn Skai Kru, as Harper had jokingly called it, looking out over the mostly gray world, with an atmosphere filled with thick clouds. “Two more years,” he acknowledged. 

He felt Murphy’s gaze rolling over him. “Well,” the shorter man spoke. “I’ve got everything up here.” 

Bellamy smiled, but it turned into a smirk quickly. “That happy with your algae, are you?”

Murphy snorted, and left him at the window.

______________________

The day came around where Clarke knew that the air would be survivable for all residents of the bunker. She and Madi took off to find the bunker in the rover, but they didn’t find anything. Polis had collapsed on the bunker entirely, and with only one and a half pair of hands -- Madi was nine years old -- they were pretty much useless against all that rubble. That night, back at the water’s edge, Clarke called to Bellamy. “Hey. It’s zero more days, okay? It’s safe now,” she spoke into the microphone. She paused to breathe, but it was longer than she intended. She laughed, but it sounded as scared as she was. “Tell Raven to-- to get your asses down here, so we can start digging your sister out.” She swallowed. Octavia needed him. And... “I need you here, Bellamy. Please, come soon.”

As the weeks passed, her fear turned to anger. One night, after she sent Madi off to bed in the lab, she smashed a few plates in the kitchen and walked outside. She screamed at the sky, and yelled at herself. She hadn’t been fast enough, had she? She killed... She killed... She sank to the floor, the radio in her hand. She wasn’t sure who she called out to anymore, but her finger was on the button. “Everything I touch, dies,” she said quietly, her voice strangled.

Madi found her like that, hours and hours later when she woke up to find that Clarke hadn’t joined her in the bed. She told her caretaker that, they might have lost count of the days; maybe they had technical difficulties with coming back down; they could still be up there, desperate to go home at some point. Clarke didn’t call to them for a few days, but finally picked up the radio after nine days: “Please, don’t be dead.”

They weren’t dead, they most definitely had not lost track of time and the difficulties weren’t necessarily technical. Instead, only a few months after they would be able to come down -- they had waited to make sure everything was prepared for take-off -- a small passenger ship approached the Ring. After a friendly conversation over the short-range radio, they let the ship enter. A mistake. The ship was hostile, and the seven were taken prisoner. For the weeks after, Bellamy was angry. This anger, however, came from fear, too. The thought of never seeing Octavia again stabbed him in the chest, taking his breath away. His little sister had been his spot of light in the future, while Clarke had been his light in the back. _If we don’t, she died in vain._

The seven helped each other keep track of time through the months following; Harper being the last to give up. Bellamy had lost it. He was supposed to have hope. He was still breathing, wasn’t he? But was Clarke? Was Octavia? Of the first he was sure she’d taken her last breath, and of the other one, he couldn’t be sure. What was he even breathing for?


	2. these wild oceans, shake what's left of me loose

“Here we go again,” Clarke sighed. Bellamy, if you can hear me, you're alive. It's been 2199 days since Praimfaya. I don't know why I still do this every day.” She paused. “Maybe it's my way of staying sane, not forgetting who I am. Who I was.” She let the button go, and stared forward, into the red and green landscape. “It's been safe for you to come down for over a year now. Why haven't you?” she sighed. “The bunker's gone silent, too. We tried digging them out for a while, but there was too much rubble. I haven't made contact with them, either.” Why was she telling him this? If he was listening, he already heard her. “Anyway, I still have hope. Tell Raven to aim for the one spot of green, and you'll find me. The rest of the planet, from what I've seen, basically sucks, so...”

Whooshing sounds began to close in, and through the clouds, a speck of black came roaring down. She couldn’t believe her eyes. There it was, wasn’t it? What she’d been waiting for. 2199 days after she lived a day she shouldn’t have lived through.

She rose to her feet and hit the button again, a smile appearing on her face. “Never mind,” she said. “I see you.”

______________________

He awoke to the roaring of the machines around them. He was strapped in, and next to him, Monty held the hand of a still unconscious Harper. Emori was looking at Murphy with worry. Raven and Echo were still out. Bellamy let his gaze wander, and found himself in a room with a large amount of unknown people, out cold or already waking up. Finally, after scanning everyone, to find out he knew none of them -- unsurprisingly -- his gaze fell back on Monty. Their eyes met. “Déjà vu?” he could hear the younger boy ask. Bellamy couldn’t help himself; he laughed. A genuine laugh, in which Monty joined him, and as soon as she woke up, Harper did too.

With a shock, they crashed into solid ground. The rummage when the doors were about to be opened reminded Bellamy of something. The something made him smile wistfully. He’d hold her in his mind forever. Her strength would always inspire him to keep walking, he knew, as the doors let in new light. It wasn’t birdsong or green growth that met their senses when they walked out. There was only sand, and dry earth. When his boots hit the ground, he muttered: “We’re back, bitches,” and Murphy grinned back at him.

Raven halted, and when they noticed, they turned back to her. “We gotta figure out where we are. If we wanna get to Polis, we should know how far we’re out.”

The ship was better equipped than the dropship, they discovered. After some fidgeting with the internal operating system, Raven found the coordinates that the ship had counted on. She stared at them, and typed a lot more before she concluded: “We’re not far from where the dropship landed, if I’m correct. So that means we’re close to Arkadia, as well.”

Bellamy let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “Good. Which way to Polis, then?”

Raven snorted. “How should I know, Blake? I’m not the pro at navigating.”

Echo pointed to the screen. “We’re close to your former camp, right?”

They all turned to face the woman. “Yeah,” said Raven. “Everything was metal, too. Might be some ruins. We can check it out to help us get orientated.”

“If we can get some sense of direction, we might find Polis. Don’t they have a compass lying around?” asked Echo, starting to look around. In under a minute, the seven were scavenging the ship, in search of a compass. When they heard Emori call out, they rushed over, to see hundreds of backpacks lying around. Every single one had a set of basic survival supplies -- except for knives or guns. A compass, however, was present, and they all took one and set out to leave. 

“Alright,” Raven commented, as they distanced themselves from the space ship. “I don’t wanna ruin your lives, so I’m gonna say that I’m not sure where I’m going, but I think--”

She was cut off by a voice from behind. “Where do you think you’re going?” yelled a guy. A group of them approached. They looked like they were the same age as the members of the reborn Skai Kru, but were nearly all built like Bellamy, and he found himself stepping up next to Raven -- making sure to not step in front of her, just to save her pride. Echo moved up as well, the attitude of the other people channeling an old aggression in her.

“What’s it matter to you, huh?” Bellamy called over. 

A woman pushed herself to the front, and she walked up to him. “You’ve got our supplies, there,” she snarled, squaring her shoulders as she stared in his face.

Raven huffed. Harper replied, a little annoyed: “We’ve left you enough, don’t worry about that. We’d like to go now, we have some miles to go.” The last words were meant for the other six. Harper began to swivel on her heel.

One of the men of the group had approached close enough to be able to grab her wrist. “Just a minute, swee--”

Monty snatched his wrist instead. “Don’t touch her,” he spat.

But the man laughed in his face, and slammed his lower arm into his face. Monty stumbled back. “Hey! Back off,” Bellamy snapped, stepping up until he towered over the only slightly shorter man. 

“Or what, huh?” The man straightened himself so they barely differed in height. 

Bellamy felt like making him feel that what, but he only clenched and unclenched his fists. “We’re just going to leave. Clearly we’re not going to get along, so why don’t you let us go with our share of the supplies, alright?”

“How about this. You give them back, and leave. We’re going to die here, anyway,” the woman offered with a smug smirk.

Emori snorted. “You might, with that attitude.”

The smirk was gone in a blink, and the woman had launched herself at the small brunette. The fact that she was small didn’t change anything about her skills in protecting her own ass, however, and Emori managed to get a hold of her neck in a very short amount of time. All hell broke loose. Bellamy tried to keep the peace, but as soon as two of those people were beating in on their mechanic at the same time, he elbowed one of them in the face. Raven used her good leg to knee the other guy in the nuts. She and Bellamy shared a look, but he moved on to help Monty out.

They were outnumbered, however, even though Echo was still undoubtedly a certified kicker of ass and most of the others had picked up some skills from her while on the Go-Sci Ring. More of the strange people kept approaching, and they were fighting a war they couldn’t win. Luckily, not everyone that had boarded the ship was interested in picking a fight. But they were still outnumbered, and it began to show. Blood was running down over Monty’s lips by now, Emori was limping slightly, and Raven had marks on her neck that would bruise for sure. They were defeated. But Bellamy was done waiting. Octavia was dangling in the front of his mind, as if he could touch her, and he kept beating in on the fight. But once someone knocked Echo out, there wasn’t much he could do. Three men held him down as they beat him, and he could see the same being done to the others. This was it. They had been thinking they were free, but they were prisoners. Bloodied and beaten prisoners.


	3. the thunder breaks when i open my mouth

A shot rang out through the air, and one of the pair of feet in his side came to a stop. More shots continued to be fired. His eyes hurt as he tried to open them. In a fruitless attempt, he began to wipe the blood from his eyebrow where the skin had split.

“Needless to say that we have the guns, so we give the orders, right?” Clicking of the loading of a rifle was audible. But that voice wasn’t unfamiliar. He heard it before. In real life, or in dreams. At least somewhere. He pushed up on his lower arms, and began to sit and turn at the same time, to see the woman who had spoken.

Another shot came through. Bellamy winced. He could see someone collapse with a bullet hole in their leg, and finally looked at the shooter.

She was blonde, but had a pink streak in her hair. He could see that much from the angle she was standing at. Another smaller one held a rifle. The blonde gave the little one orders. She came running over.

“Get up!” the girl whispered, almost excitedly. She recovered, however: “Can you stand?”

“Who-- are you?” Bellamy grumbled, as he pushed himself up to stand, a little bent over to protect the broken skin on his side. He grabbed Raven’s arm as she threatened to topple over again. 

Her fingers reached his sleeve. She stared, brown eyes wide open, but not at him. “Bellamy,” she warned, looking right past him.

He followed her gaze, his eyebrows drawn into a frown. He could see the blonde woman stealing glances at them as she watched the other strangers from the ship and made sure they wouldn’t get any closer.

She wasn’t any different. Different hair, that’s for sure, but her face was the same. She wore dark clothes that could’ve been the same as the ones he’d last seen her in -- take away the hazmat suit, of course.

“Clarke?” he managed. 

She shared a quick smile. “Get to the rover. Madi will lead you there.”

It was as if she wasn’t surprised he was there. Of course not, he realised. She had been sure that they were safe. But all this time... To him, she was a ghost. He was starting to think that they knocked him out too. He was about to get mad at himself for thinking this stupid scenario up, but the girl tugged at his sleeve. “We have to carry her.”

He had to steady himself as he folded his hands over Echo’s shoulders; Harper getting a hold of her legs. As they wandered off, they heard Clarke speak in loud and threatening tone. Clarke. He couldn’t get it through his head. They pretended to bury her without a casket or a body. They had some kind of memorial on the Ring, and now, all the time he’d spent in the Skybox felt like a waste. He couldn’t be mad at her. He wasn’t mad at her. He was mad at... What should he be mad at?

Himself, he decided. He left her behind. It began to occur to him that he did leave her to die in Praimfaya. She was alive, but the days couldn’t always have been golden here. He swallowed as they reached the rover and the little girl, Madi, opened up the back.

______________________

Clarke backed away slowly from the ship. They were staring, most of them with their hands up. They didn’t rush towards their wounded companions, which meant that they were probably strangers to each other, as well. Their wounds weren’t fatal, if they would be treated right. The blonde prayed that one of them knew how to dress a wound. They would figure it out, probably. This went against all of her instincts as a medic, but then again, she hadn’t played the medic in years. Only the mother. So when she was at a safe distance, she ran, and didn’t look back.

When she reached the rover, she found Madi trying to make conversation with Harper, but the little girl looked frustrated. Clarke quickly folded her arm around the little girl. “Let’s get out of here, before they follow us. Get in the rover. Time for explaining is later.” She shooed Harper, Monty and Emori in with a small gesture of her hand.

She quickly climbed into the front seat and let Madi come up beside her. She set the rover into motion and drove away from the scene, in an easy pace at first, but stepping on the gas after a while. She was taking them home. They needed medical attention before they went to Polis; she was fully aware that had been Bellamy’s goal, obviously. She could only hope that Octavia was still down there, and safe. But they’d find out later. The lab first.

It was good to see how Murphy and Harper had improved their own medical skills throughout the years, and Clarke found herself smiling. She’d made so many speculations about them, and now that they were back, she realised how deluded her thoughts had actually been. As if they’d been with her the whole time. She couldn’t find herself to be surprised, because of the blind faith she’d lived in for most of those six years on her own -- with Madi, but of course she was waiting for more.

They had made so many trips together that Clarke drove back to the lab on what was almost instinct. She found herself driving towards the shallow waters so fast, that they arrived in under an hour. They crossed at a more lazy pace, just to keep the water from coming into the rover, since the glass in the back wasn’t intact anymore. Once they crossed and found the lab, Clarke climbed out, and began to help her friends. It surprised her when Raven clung to her neck and wrapped her arms around her. She was followed by Monty and Harper, then Murphy, and eventually Emori and Echo. Bellamy stood when he emerged from the rover, and stared at her, as if in a daze that he couldn’t escape just yet. Clarke hugged back, of course, and replied to them as they told her that they all missed her so much. She hadn’t missed them often. She’d mostly just believed that they were there for her. It felt odd, but she couldn’t help it.

She held Madi’s hand as they entered. They softly spoke in Trigedasleng, the language Madi hid in whenever she got nervous. Immediately, she led the group to one of the levels where Clarke stored her supplies. She didn’t say much as she handed each of them water, and began to clean and dress some of the cuts. She couldn’t have said much, even if she wanted to. She didn’t know whether they had heard her throughout the years; they weren’t talking either. Maybe they already knew that she had been talking to Bellamy, and him alone. Maybe they already knew about the bunker and Madi and everything she did in the lab and around it. So she wasn’t addressing anything, not until she finished up. “Let’s go upstairs.”


	4. stitch by stitch i tear apart, brokenness is a form of art

Clarke didn’t talk. It made him uncomfortable, because he couldn’t talk either. Maybe, if she said something, finally acknowledged that these six years had really happened, had really been hell; maybe then, he could tell her that he missed her, he needed her, he loved her. But he kept quiet as she did too. It made him feel like an idiot, too, because he had regretted not telling her he loved her so much already. She didn’t feel real. He had spent so much time telling himself that she wasn’t. She was dead, she wasn’t around anymore; and now, there she was. He needed to feel her presence, he needed to feel her as Clarke, to make sure this wasn’t some sick dream.

And when she led them upstairs and flicked on some lights, a sigh went through the room, and the six left Clarke standing in the doorway. Madi recovered and bounced along, as the six adored the drawings.

And he adored them, too. He loved them. They had a roughness to them that he hadn’t seen in the Skybox. But he wasn’t convinced until he came up next to her. 

She must have sensed his presence, because she glanced sideways, and then he saw.

This was Clarke. Those eyes, the perfect blue he had tried to see in everything for years. He remembered her after she hugged him in Camp Jaha, as she told him that she trusted everyone with him rather than with herself, as she thanked him for keeping him alive. He wanted to hug her then, but he felt like he’d missed his window. It felt alright, anyway. This was where he belonged. Next to her, looking over their people.

“So--” Clarke began quietly. “Have you-- Have you heard me?”

He blinked. An awful feeling landed in his stomach. “Heard you?”

“I’ve tried to call out to you every day,” she admitted, her bottom lip clearly between her teeth. “I missed some days, I guess, but I hoped--” She cut herself off. 

He wanted to fall on his knees in front of her. He wanted to yell at her to kill him, he deserved it. If only he’d had a little more faith. She lived. She wanted to talk to them every day. No one had been there to hear her. “Oh, Clarke,” was all he managed. His hands began to shake. He didn’t want them to.

He could see her jaw beginning to tremble. Cautiously, he stepped closer, and when she didn’t back away, he opened his arms and carefully wrapped her in.

______________________

When he engulfed her in an embrace, it really came down on her. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t heard her. She was alone for six years, and had been pretending as if she hadn’t been. Her entire body began to shake, but so did his, and she dug her nose into the crook of his neck, imagining the silent tears that were coming down his face. And she wanted to scream, like she’d done in the beginning. She didn’t, however. She just tightened her grip and let herself cry. She didn’t let him go until his grip loosened; which took a long time.

She was glad to find that tears were drying on his cheeks, too. She grazed her thumb over his face to wipe one of them away.

“I’m so sorry,” he spoke, his voice cracked. “Gods, Clarke, I’m so sorry.”

Her bottom lip began to shake as he said it. She stared up, and looked at his face long enough to finally trample the image of his eyes and his freckles and all the other features of his face into her memory. When she came back to his eyes, her mouth opened. It took her very long to say anything to him, however. “I-- I love you,” she finally said, so that only he would hear it.

He stared at her, his eyes wide, and she was sure he was doing the same, taking in every inch of skin on her face. “I love you too, Clarke. I-- I wanted to tell you, every day, but I thought you were gone. I thought-- I thought--”

She cut him off when she pressed her lips to his. Everything they had said to each other hadn’t sounded entirely convinced, but she had never been so sure about doing something before. He didn’t shake any longer as he returned the kiss. His hands came up around her waist, and in return, she let one of them press between his shoulder blades, and the other tangled itself in his dark curls. She didn’t tug, however, she just ruffled the hair and caressed his cheekbone with her thumb as she deepened the kiss. It was slow, easy, certain. When they finally let go, she leaned back a little so that she could see his eyes again. He looked back. 

“Your funeral sucked,” he finally grumbled, a small smile lingering on his lips. Clarke laughed. She laughed the most genuine laugh she’d ever laughed in years. Somewhere in between, she cried, but it didn’t matter. Bellamy was here. He hadn’t been there for a long time, but he was here now. Her heart, her home. So she laughed, and she kissed him again, before they went to join the others, as they admired the fragments of memories on the wall. 

When he pulled her into his chest carefully, as she pointed him to a drawing of Octavia, she told him: “When we dig her out, and everyone’s safe, I want to draw you. Every detail of you. Every single one of these little stars,” She pointed to his face, tracing the little specks on his cheeks. “I was so scared I’d remember you wrong.”

He smiled, and she reminded herself to draw that, too. He spoke, and the loving tone he used made up for the six lonely years she’d managed to survive. “Whatever the hell you want, princess.”


End file.
